Habits (revision3)

[RC James]

Hi James. The lines are quite nice, but the poem as a whole is unintelligible. You need to throw in some hints for the reader, otherwise it's a nice, impenetrable poem.

1. Storing away Stephanie's old habits with demons may mean something to you, but not to the reader. If you throw in a line like that and never come back to it, it's frustrating.
2. Until the end I don't know whether Stephanie is a madwoman, a ghost, a cat, a bird, an AIDS victim, ot the cuckoo in a cuckoo clock. Or a combination of these. It's not the sort of ambiguity that is enjoyable, it just feels like the writer forgot that there was a reader.
3. The simile at the end is nice in isolation, but in the context of the rest of the poem, leaves me no wiser.
4. The high watermark of vagueness is reached in L12

Stephanie obviously lives with the guy who is also addicted, they've obviously been though some hard times together, like the old habit, that they'd given up and stored in the closet with other demons they tried to drop and do away with. The poem is, again, obviously about drug addiction, and the lines in that context become, again, obvious.  I think yoiu're being aggressively facetious in your listing of who Stephanie might be, really kinda.....  The ending is, again, obvious, in the context of drug addiction, the narrator is drawn into the "old habit"as he watches her head for the dealer's corner. I'm not going to expand on the content because, again, it's obvious. RC

I was not being facetious at all.
Once you've supplied the encryption key the message can be decoded.
It's quite a nice poem with that detail. Obvious only to those for whom drug addiction has at least middle of mind recall value, but you may want to keep it that way. 
If you don't, then changing the title to 'Addict' is an option but it does make things too obvious.

Let me try and re-read your poem in my newfound knowledge:


Middle of the room, 
Stephanie dances around me, ....this is probably why I got thrown off. The opening has a random action that can suggest other possibilities. If you begin with 'Chasing that old habit / we'd stored away with demons'...?
chasing that old habit 
we'd stored away with demons.

What remains of her willpower 
spins her out like a whirligig.
Through the window 
the sun bakes her as she unfurls.

Pencil thin arms and legs 
punctuate her furious craving. ....not sure what this means. her arms might be punctured with needle marks that 'punctuate' her in a literal and metaphorical sense. However, I don't see how the arms and legs are punctuating anything - they are receiving the action. Unless you meant something else.
Hypnotized by the kitchen clock, 
she hits the door we know as death. ....can't understand this. If 'death' is a dope-related slang, it's fine. If it's actual death, then I'm not sure the metaphor works if she's still alive. She might hit the door of the room of death, say, but that's different.

I clench the sill, 
and watch, 
as she storms the old route, ....this is a great line
then I scour the dresser for change.
The coins jangle like a ring of keys 
in the hands 
of an approaching jailer ....solid ending


Her arms and legs punctuate ' in the active, not passive sense, they are whirling, and thrusting, so they are stressing and accentuating her condition.

The door as death - is a way of pointing out the mind-set of the addict, they know they're headed down a road that, if followed , will only lead to death in the real sense, but they continue chasing the dragon because of the, now elusive, high.

Thanks for spending time on this, I appreciate it, RC